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Boulder County presents two options for subdivision road repairs

Public meetings next week preview tax question for ballot

By John FryarLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
07/14/2013 09:39:29 PM MDT

Updated:
07/14/2013 09:46:03 PM MDT

Voters who live in or own property in unincorporated subdivisions might have to decide in November how to pay for repairs to paved streets, such as this one in the Willis Heights neighborhood, pictured here on Friday.
(
LEWIS GEYER
)

The county has to figure out how to pay the projected $50 million to $70 million cost of repairing, repaving and reconstructing approximately 150 miles of paved roads in nearly 120 subdivisions.

One option is to form a permanent property-tax-supported public improvement district (PID) to fix the subdivision roads within 15 years, then try to keep them in good condition.

Registered voters living in Boulder County's unincorporated residential subdivisions, as well as owners of subdivision properties who don't live in them, would be asked in November to create the tax district, authorize the levy and approve the sale of bonds to finance immediate work on the worst roads.

If you go

Boulder County has scheduled three public meetings regarding the formation of an improvement district to rehabilitate paved subdivision roads in unincorporated neighborhoods:

The other choice would be to create a local improvement district (LID) that would have a 15-year life span and no bonding authority.

Road rehabilitation costs would be charged to subdivision property owners using a formula that considers such factors as the average length of road frontage per property and each property's assessed value.

Boulder County commissioners have decided that if a majority of voters rejects the PID ballot proposal in November, the county will form the LID and bill subdivision property owners for the work.

Under either scenario, the county will pay 20 percent of the costs.

The commissioners, transportation department staff and organizations representing the subdivisions have worked for more than four years to create a road-rehabilitation plan that would gain residents' and property owners' approval.

At three public meetings, county officials will report what they think needs to be done to proceed and "provide detailed information about how a PID or an LID would work," Gardner said.

The county annually provides basic maintenance services on rural subdivisions' roads, including snow removal, patching potholes and filling cracks. But under longstanding county policy -- written into the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan in 1995 --each subdivision is responsible for major repairs such as repaving or reconstructing its roads.

Boulder County maintains 643 miles of paved and gravel roads, including 150 paved miles in subdivisions. It now spends most of its $12 million annual road and bridge funds budget, however, on repairing and maintaining the 240 miles of regional and primary roads that connect the county's communities.

When Boulder County accepted each subdivision's paved roads as meeting Boulder County development standards, it was with the idea that the county would continue to maintain them, said transportation director George Gerstle.

But the county never committed to pay the roads' reconstruction, he said.

County officials have said the roads and bridges budget isn't big enough -- and that funds cannot be shifted from elsewhere in the county budget -- to cover the muiltimillion-dollar costs of rehabilitating, repairing, repaving and reconstructing unincorporated subdivision roads.

"The commissioners have decided we have to solve this," Gerstle said. With more miles of suvdivision roads falling into a "poor" pavement-condition category each year -- making them more expensive to repair -- "now is the time," he said.

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